Andrew L. Goldman, Ph.D.

Professor of History

Andrew L. Goldman has been a faculty member at GU since 2002, in both the History and Classical Civilizations Department, and served as the Alphonse A. and Geraldine F. Arnold Distinguished Professor from 2015-18. His fields of special interest are the...

Andrew L. Goldman has been a faculty member at GU since 2002, in both the History and Classical Civilizations Department, and served as the Alphonse A. and Geraldine F. Arnold Distinguished Professor from 2015-18. His fields of special interest are the history and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. He received his BA from Wesleyan University (1988), and his MA and PhD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1993 and 2000, respectively). Before arriving at GU, he spent several years studying and teaching abroad, in Ankara, Turkey, as a Fulbright Fellow and instructor at Bilkent University (1995-97), and in Rome as an instructor at Duke University's Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (1999-2000). Dr. Goldman was also the Rodney S. Young Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Museum (2000-01), an institution at which he continues to conduct research (as a consulting scholar through 2020).

As a native northeasterner, Dr. Goldman was somewhat surprised to find himself transported to the Pacific Northwest and Gonzaga in 2002, among the first of a new wave of faculty who have entered the College of Arts & Sciences since that time. Actually, he was quite surprised, as he had never heard of either Spokane or Gonzaga. Nonetheless, he quickly adapted to and felt thoroughly adopted by the community, and has come to see Gonzaga and the Spokane region as his home.

At Gonzaga and in its study abroad programs, Dr. Goldman contributes to the History and Classical Civilizations Departments through instructing introductory classes on western civilization and upper-division coursework focused more narrowly on the history and archaeology of the ancient world. Using a broad range of textual and artifactual sources, Dr. Goldman encourages his students to explore social, political and economic issues pertinent to the ancient world as well as our world today, examining topics such as global commerce, social diversity and identity, and the rise and decline of complex state entities across a period which spans from the 3rd millennium B.C. until the end of the Roman Empire. As a field archaeologist, Dr. Goldman has worked as a director, field researcher or excavator at numerous ancient sites in the Mediterranean, including Çatal Höyük, Oinoanda, Kerkenes Dag, Gordion, and Sinop in Turkey, and Paleopaphos in Cyprus. At the archaeological field school held in Sinop each summer since 2015, Dr. Goldman uses the opportunity to teach abroad to introduce undergraduates to archaeological method and practice, with a focus upon proper data collection and the interpretation of primary evidence for understanding the material culture and social history of the ancient world.

Dr. Goldman maintains a strong passion for bringing the ancient world to life, through developing programs and community outreach opportunities focused on the ancient world. Recent projects include the 3-month exhibition, “Roman Myth and Mythmaking”, co-curated with Dr. Paul Manoguerra at the Jundt Art Museum in the fall of 2017. The exhibition, which featured nearly 120 ancient objects from three East Coast institutions, brought over 5000 visitors to the GU campus (as well as a troupe of Roman reenactors to the Herak Quad). In addition, Dr. Goldman has continued to bring local, regional and national lecturers to campus on an annual basis, providing the GU and Spokane community with access to some of the brightest and most engaging speakers in the fields of archaeology, ancient history and Classics. Such efforts include the 2016 lecture series “Perceptions of Roman Myth, Memory and Culture”, which brought nine speakers to GU via a Spark Grant from Humanities Washington, an institution who also supported the 2010 “Greek Week” lecture series, held in tandem with the GU Theater Department’s production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. In recognition of such contributions, Dr. Goldman has received several honors for his teaching, advising and professional work at Gonzaga, including a Faculty Exemplary Award for Professional Service (2017), the GU Compass Award (2014), and the Gonzaga University Exemplary Teaching Award (2008).

When he’s not teaching at Gonzaga or excavating in the field, Dr. Goldman is an active member of local and national institutions which promote scholarly and public discussion of the ancient world and the field of archaeology. He is currently the president of the Spokane Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), and has served as a traveling lecturer for national AIA since 2008. Since 2006 he has led numerous tours of Turkey for GU students and community members as well as other individuals, students and scholars. His continuing affiliations include the AIA, the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest (CAPN), the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), the Association of Ancient Historians (AAH), and the Vergilian Society.

And when he’s not doing all of that, Dr. Goldman likes to spend quality time with his wife Amy, their Bernese Mountain dogs Pistol and Finnegan, and their Maine Coon cat Atticus. His other areas of interest include hiking, skiing, yoga, pottery and gardening.

Selected Publications on Roman Gordion

“New Evidence for Non-Elite Burials in Central Turkey”, in J. R. Brandt, E. Hagelberg, G. Bjørnstad and S. Ahrens (eds.), Life and Death in Asia Minor in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Times.Studies in Archaeology and Bioarchaeology (Oxbow Books, 2017), 149-75.

J. G. Royal and S. Tusa, with further chapters by A. L. Goldman, W. M. Murray, J. R. W. Prag and P. C. Schmitz. The Site of the Battle of the Aegates Islands at the End of the First Punic War. Fieldwork, Analyses and Perspectives, 2005-2016, by Journal of Roman Archaeology Supp. 106 (forthcoming in Sept. 2017).

“Weapons and the Army”, in J. D. Evans (ed.) A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Republic (Blackwell, 2013), 123–40.

As a field archaeologist, Dr. Goldman has worked at numerous ancient sites in the Mediterranean, including Çatal Höyük, Oinoanda, Kerkenes Dag, Gordion and Sinop. His chief area of interest is the material culture of the Roman world, and he has published on Latin inscriptions, carved gemstones, Roman military equipment, Roman cemeteries and funerary practices, Roman pottery and trade routes, as well as other related topics.

Beginning in 1992, Dr. Goldman joined the excavation team at ancient Gordion in central Turkey, where he studied the economic, military and social history of the small Roman-period settlement that flourished there between the 1st and 5th centuries A.D. With the support of grants from the Loeb Foundation at Harvard University, he directed excavations exploring the Roman-period settlement and its cemeteries in 2004-05, revealing for the first time material evidence (e.g., armor, weapons, barracks buildings) that indicated Roman Gordion was a minor military base during the 1st and 2nd centuries. The base, which is the first site of its type ever to have been investigated in Turkey, served as a collection and communications node along a major Roman highway, a road station (statio) that was something akin to a rural state police base crossed with a Pony Express post.

Dr. Goldman’s most recent projects are located in Sicily and the Black Sea region. In 2013, he was invited to publish the Roman military equipment recovered from the Mediterranean seabed near the Aegates (modern Egadi) Islands off the western coast of Sicily. The ancient helmets are part of the debris field associated with the final winner-take-all battle of the First Punic War (265-41 B.C.), as the Roman Republic and its arch-nemesis Carthage fought for supremacy over the western Mediterranean. As such, these finds represent some of the oldest known Roman military equipment ever recovered from a secure battlefield context.

Since 2014, Dr. Goldman has served as the field director for the Sinop Kale Excavations (SKE), a long-term archaeological project dedicated to exploring the ancient city of Sinope on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. Originally settled as a Greek colony in the late 7th century B.C., this site was one of the largest, wealthiest and most politically influential cities in the Black Sea region for over 2,700 years. The annual project has a team composed of specialists from nearly a dozen countries, and Dr. Goldman has taken undergraduates from GU and other institutions to work at the site as part of the Gonzaga-in-Sinop study abroad program. The SKE receives financial support from Gonzaga and several partner institutions, including California State University at Northridge, Queens College CUNY, and the University of Sheffield, as well as from public and private sources which include the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Geographic.